Abiotic Stress Signaling in Plants–An Overview

Abiotic stress factors [such as salinity, water availability (less or excess water), temperature extremes (freezing, cold, or high), metal/metalloids, nutrient stress, etc.] are basically severe menaces to the global agriculture, restricting the crop plants from reaching their full genetic potential and causing significant yield losses worldwide. In general, stresses are complex and multigenic traits that affect the plant performance significantly by reducing the growth, development, and, finally, the yield. To counteract the adverse effect of the stressors, plant have evolved efficient defense mechanisms by manipulating their tolerance potential through integratedmolecular and cellular responses. To face the environmental challenges in the form of various abiotic stresses, perception of stress signals as well as their transduction is a very crucial step for switching on adaptive responses to ensure the survival of plants. Therefore, understanding the physiological and molecular aspects of plant functions under stressful conditions, for example, the activation of cascades of molecular networks (perception of stress signals, transducers, transcription regulators, target stress related genes and metabolites), is desirable. Recent studies have revealed that understanding signal perception and its transduction is crucial for engineering stress tolerance in crop plants. This chapter appraises recent literature on stress signaling and stress responses in plants.